Fighting the Right

Sam Rohrer of the American Pastors Network appeared on The Dove TV yesterday to discuss the Supreme Court decision striking down state bans on gay marriage, where he and host Perry Atkinson warned that the ruling will eventually lead to churches losing their tax-exempt status, having their ministry broadcasts shut down, and seeing their pastors hauled off to jail.

But, Rohrer warned, it is not just anti-gay Christians who have lost their freedom as a result of this ruling, but the entire nation because freedom only exists because of God and America has just booted God out and effectively turned itself into a dictatorship.

"If you want to say, 'God, I don't need you,' then God says, 'Fine, you just go have your own way but you're also going to suffer the consequences of having your own way,'" Rohrer said. "They don't understand, I don't believe, what the end result is going to be because they themselves are going to lose the civil freedom to do a lot of the things in their life that they would like to do that they think are just going to be automatically there, not understanding that the only reason we have civil freedom, the only reason we have a First, and Second, and Third, and Fourth, and Fifth Amendment and so forth is because of the biblical underpinnings that permit it."

"When they throw all of that off, you ultimately go just to the power of those who happen to be in office at that point," he continued, "and it's dictatorship. I guarantee you, those right now who think they are savoring the moment because they think they have won have actually lost great, great freedom."

End Times radio host Rick Wiles said on his “Trunews” radio program yesterday that he made an appearance in Washington, D.C., on Friday to warn people celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision striking down state bans on same-sex marriage that the country, as a result of the court ruling, will soon face divine destruction.

This will be his final warning call as a prophetic watchman, Wiles said, since now “judgment is certain.”

“In 2012, the Lord had shown me that America is morphing into Babylon and I will say this to you: The metamorphic transformation is complete. America became Mystery Babylon last Friday and I know her fate,” he said, adding that the Bible advises people to “flee from the midst of Babylon.”

Wiles told Alan Colmes today that he is preparing to leave the U.S. to an undisclosed location, claiming that God will “lift His hand of protection from this nation” and “permit America’s enemies to attack this nation.”

He also predicted economic devastation, food shortages, “disease, pestilence, drought, natural calamities and a great shaking.”

“America is over,” Wiles said. “The final stage will be a surprise attack by America’s enemies which will end up with foreign soldiers on the soil of the United States of America and the American people will go into slavery.”

Warning that the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision puts religious freedom “absolutely, unquestionably and unequivocally” at risk, former Southern Baptist Convention political official Richard Land said today that the decision could even land pastors in jail for refusing to perform same-sex marriages.

“Unless we have a spiritual awakening in America, the battle for traditional marriage is over and the battle for religious freedom has begun,” Land told Newsmax’s J.D. Hayworth.

“I know it’s difficult for liberals to understand this, but we have convictions,” he said. “And convictions can’t be coerced and they can’t be intimidated and they can’t be threatened. We’re going to speak the truth in love. Just because five lawyers say same-sex marriage is legal, that doesn’t make it moral and that doesn’t make it right.”

When Hayworth asked him if the Supreme Court’s decision means pastors could end up in jail for refusing to perform marriages for gay and lesbian couples, Land responded that “it could” after a few “intermediate steps.”

Of course, in the dozens of states that allowed gay and lesbian couples to marry before last week’s decision, not one pastor has been thrown into jail for refusing to perform such a marriage, just as nearly 50 years after the Supreme Court struck down interracial marriage bans, clergy are still free to refuse to perform such marriages. Even some of Land’s fellow Southern Baptist leaders have denied the possibility that pastors will be sent to jail for refusing to perform gay couple’s weddings.

Writing in the far-right outlet BarbWire today, conservative pundit Sylvia Thompson says that people are getting ready to take to the “streets in civil disobedience” with “planned acts of resistance” just like during the days of the Civil Rights Movement, but this time it will be the “victims of homofascism” marching in “opposition to homosexual sham ‘marriages.’”

Most Americans, Thompson hopes, will not “bow to homofascism,” even as “more and more Americans will be persecuted, prosecuted, and imprisoned as this Court ruling goes into effect.”

“At some point, Americans being so treated will say ‘No’ and stop responding out of fear,” Thompson writes. “All of America will then grasp what homofascism truly means, as the Germans eventually grasped what Nazism meant.”

I posted an article at Renew America several months ago titled “The Coming Criminalization of Christianity in America.” I suggested that the outcome of the Supreme Court’s decision on homosexual “marriage” would be to enshrine sodomy into American law and in so doing, would decree that all Americans must bow to homofascism. As expected, they have done the despicable deed. Now what?

Many, many so-called Christian leaders will, of course, do nothing other than what they have done throughout the decades, and that is effectively ignore the homosexual lobby and its lawlessness. Other so-called Christian leaders are clearly apostate and have embraced that lawlessness, while falsely claiming that God agrees with them. That is a despicable lie. God does not agree, as Scripture clearly reveals. And then there are those believing Christian leaders who will fight evil. They are the hope of this nation, at least until Almighty God ultimately determines America’s fate.

Pastor William Owens (a black minister) of The Coalition for American Action and Principles (CAAP), consisting of ministers of all races, has decided to take a firm stand.

His organization will view the Court’s pernicious decision as equivalent to previous Courts’ decisions against black Americans, who sought equal treatment under law. That was the time when a black American minister Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his followers used the only tool available to them against a gargantuan lawless court system. They took to the streets in civil disobedience. Pastor Owens has announced that his organization will consider doing the same to fight the current Court’s ruling against Christians.

In a similar vein, former high school coach Dave Daubenmire has formed a large group of Christians called the Salt and Light Brigade, referencing Christ’s call to believers to be the salt and light of the world (Matthew 5:11-14). Coach Daubenmire indicates that he will be posting updates on planned acts of resistance to the lawlessness of this Supreme Court.

Bible Christians and the rest of the millions of Americans who made known their staunch opposition to homosexual sham “marriages” through the ballot box (in 31 states), can now stand with these brave men and others like them who have fearlessly chosen to resist. We can declare boldly that we will not be disenfranchised. Why should we allow disenfranchisement in America, where so much blood has been spilled to guarantee us the right of conscience?

…

More and more Americans will be persecuted, prosecuted, and imprisoned as this Court ruling goes into effect. It is certain to play out that way, because eventually the persecuted will stop accepting lawless court rulings that result in their bankruptcy and Naziesque brainwashing sessions (“sensitivity training”) that are punishment for noncompliance with evil.

At some point, Americans being so treated will say “No” and stop responding out of fear. All of America will then grasp what homofascism truly means, as the Germans eventually grasped what Nazism meant.

With the organization and planning that Pastor Owens, Coach Daubenmire, and groups like them will provide, victims of homofascism can now share a sense that they are not alone. Organized Americans stand with them.

WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah patted himself on the back in a column yesterday for deciding to “risk prosecution for ‘hate thoughts’ by raising what the Bible says about homosexuality,” which he said will lead to God’s judgment.

“Judgment isn’t just coming. It is here,” Farah said. “This is it. It could get worse, but the Supreme Court ruling on marriage was, in fact, itself a form of divine judgment on America.”

Farah, who predicted that millions of people will flee America as a result of the gay marriage ruling, said that Americans are “getting their just deserts [sic], as are the rest of us who have not been the salt and light needed to hold back judgment.”

“Progress on this journey often comes in small increments, sometimes two steps forward, one step back, propelled by the persistent effort of dedicated citizens,” Obama said. “And then sometimes there are days like this, when that slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.”

I found that last line to be revealing.

In the Bible, justice indeed can come swiftly as an act of God. But the only time the word “thunderbolt” is used in Scripture, in Psalm 78:48, is to describe judgment on the land of Egypt during the Exodus.

That’s what I believe hit America like a thunderbolt Friday – not justice, but judgment.

God is giving America over to her lusts and pride because, like ancient Israel, she has turned away her heart from Him, though He was like a faithful husband to them both.

America is, indeed, getting justice, but not the way Obama and the moral anarchists think of it. They are getting their just deserts [sic], as are the rest of us who have not been the salt and light needed to hold back judgment.

Judgment isn’t just coming. It is here. This is it. It could get worse, but the Supreme Court ruling on marriage was, in fact, itself a form of divine judgment on America.

Let me risk prosecution for “hate thoughts” by raising what the Bible says about homosexuality, the behavior that opened this spiritual Pandora’s box. …

There were no thunderbolts last week. But, rest assured, they are coming.

Last week on “Sandy Rios in the Morning,” National Center for Policy Analysis president and former GOP congressman Allen West said that he supported South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s call to remove the Confederate flag from state capitol grounds. However, West denounced liberals who also called for the flag’s removal, joining Rios in comparing them to extremist groups like ISIS and the Taliban that have destroyed historical monuments.

“There is a seeming collusion between liberal progressive socialists and Islamofascists,” West said.

His proof?

That the magazine Rolling Stone used a photo of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on its cover…for an article about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

West continued: “The left has to be held accountable for the things that they’re doing and their hypocrisy has to be brought out. The Taliban destroyed the shrines and the statues of Bamyan provinces; ISIS has gone around destroying the artifacts there and religious shrines and memorials in Mosul and also Palmyra; and now we have the left in the United States of America defacing memorials and part of our history. So there’s a very interesting, I don’t want to say commonality, but it is something to be said about how these individuals want to erase history.”

Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission has weighed in with his thoughts on the Supreme Court decision striking down gay marriage bans, telling anti-gay Christians to take solace in the knowledge that "this ruling will ultimately be overturned" by God.

"Morally, the Bible could not be more clear," Cass said, on his "Defending a Christian Worldview" program over the weekend. "Homosexuality is consistently condemned in the strongest possible terms ... Science proves living a homosexual lifestyle is devastating, medically and psychologically. It's not loving the encourage people to violate God's moral law, especially when the consequences are so destructive. Now we're sending a morally confused message to our children and grandchildren. God is not pleased."

"The good news," he continued, "is this ruling will ultimately be overturned. The real triune Supreme Court in Heaven has already ruled: marriage is a union of one man and one woman. We can confidently celebrate that which God has ordained because time and eternity are on our side."

The mood was apparently apoplectic at a press conference held by gay-rights opponents in front of the Alabama state judicial building yesterday, as one Republican state official called the U.S. Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision “an assault on God, on Christian heritage and on our culture” and warned that the “runaway judiciary is a bigger threat to the United States than ISIS” and “liberal judges have done [more] harm to our country and our Constitution than Al Qaeda.”

Public Service Commissioner Chip Beeker, who made the ISIS remarks, was joined by Joe Godfrey of the Alabama Citizens Action Project, who warned that Christians will soon be fired from their jobs just for attending church and by John Eidsmoe, the influential Christian Reconstructionist thinker and Michele Bachmann mentor, who said that the Supreme Court’s decision is moot because two justices who had performed legal same-sex weddings should have recused themselves.

Public Service Commissioner Chip Beeker told the crowd that "five unelected and unaccountable justices imposed their will on the people of Alabama and the United States."

"This was not an interpretation of the Constitution. It was an assault on God, on Christian heritage and on our culture," Beeker said.

"The runaway judiciary is a bigger threat to the United States than Isis. Liberal judges have done harm to our country and our constitution than Al Qaeda."

…

Joe Godfrey, executive director of the Alabama Citizens Action Program, which lobbies the Legislature on behalf of churches, said people who attend churches that oppose same-sex marriage could be threatened with losing their jobs.

"I predict it's going to happen when big corporations, CEOs, tell people that work as their employees, ''You know, if you keep going to that church that teaches against homosexuality, teaches what the Bible says, we're going to have to let you go.'

"So they're going to be forced to make a choice between a church that they attend and have been attending for years, and their job."

…

[John] Eidsmoe also said the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision was illegitimate because two of the justices who supported it -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan -- had performed same-sex marriages.

The foundation had filed a motion for Ginsburg and Kagan to recuse themselves from the case.

"They were incapable of considering this question objectively," Eidsmore said. "And therefore, they had every duty to recuse."

The Religious Right’s fear-mongering of impending anti-Christian persecution in the wake of the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision reached a crescendo last night with a fundraising email from the Family Research Council warning that President Obama plans to “eliminate” Christianity and demanding contributions “before it is literally too late.”

“[S]ame-sex ‘marriage’ is not the ultimate issue,” FRC President Tony Perkins warns in the email, “it is a stepping-stone. The real issue is the Obama administration's dogged determination to eliminate anything and everything that stands in the way of the President's radical agenda. Silence dissent. And to do that, you punish speech -- and belief.”

“Orthodox Christianity's truth doesn't change,” he adds, “and as long as we remain tethered to this transcendent, unchangeable truth, we are a problem for them. If you can't change it, you must eliminate it. Which is what they are seeking to do.”

“With the Supreme Court ruling to redefine marriage, things are going to get rough for Christians in America,” he writes, comforting his flock by quoting Jesus’ warnings to his disciples about persecution.

All emphases are in the original:

It is no exaggeration to say that this is a crisis.

FRC Action is moving fast on this. We are pushing for passage of FADA -- the First Amendment Defense Act: legislation that will help protect people of faith from their own government. It would prohibit discrimination against individuals, organizations and small businesses because of their belief in natural marriage.

Under FADA (similar to legislation previously known as the Marriage and Religious Freedom Act) the same institutions that Verrilli warned about -- child welfare organizations, private schools, religious universities, relief providers, abstinence groups, military religious contractors, adoption agencies, Christian hospitals, political nonprofits and others -- would be spared the government's crackdown.

But we need your help on this.

I'm asking you to take immediate action -- give a generous contribution to help us fight back before it's literally too late, and the exercise of our religious freedoms are relegated to a few hours on Sunday morning.

The Supreme Court case that revealed the government's intentions made it clear: same-sex "marriage" is not the ultimate issue; it is a stepping-stone. The real issue is the Obama administration's dogged determination to eliminate anything and everything that stands in the way of the President's radical agenda. Silence dissent. And to do that, you punish speech -- and belief.

We also need to understand: With the Supreme Court ruling to redefine marriage, things are going to get rough for Christians in America. But we should not be surprised. Jesus warned us this would happen in John Chapters 15 and 16 when He essentially says, I've warned you they will hate you because you follow Me, so that you're not surprised when it happens and it doesn't cause you to be offended and fall away from the truth.

In the view of the Left, standing firm for biblical values is beyond preposterous: it's dangerous. By holding fast to what the Bible teaches about human interactions, you make yourself dangerous to this government. Orthodox Christianity's truth doesn't change -- and as long as we remain tethered to this transcendent, unchangeable truth, we are a problem for them. If you can't change it, you must eliminate it. Which is what they are seeking to do.

Our culture has become dangerous.

If we don't stop this march against freedom now, we will see a rapid erosion of our liberties . We will see the disappearance of tax exemptions for Christian ministries and institutions and student loans for Christian students. We will see a renewed push for ENDA (the so-called Employment Non-Discrimination Act), which would tie the hands of Christian business owners. We will see a host of executive orders issued by the President before he leaves office.

This radical President is sure to push the envelope. He will make every move he can, with a firm belief that Republicans will not have the political will and courage to undo any of them.

Conservative activist Wayne Allyn Root joined Florida talk radio host Joyce Kaufman on her radio program on Friday to discuss the Supreme Court’s decision striking down bans on gay marriage, which Root said “was the best thing to ever happen” to divorce attorneys because “gays will never stay married.”

“Marriage is the most difficult thing in the world,” he said, “I’m talking to you as someone who has been married 24 years, marriage is so difficult that if you do not go to church every Sunday and your whole life isn’t built on a bedrock faith in God and you don’t have kids and your whole life isn’t built around those kids and none of that’s in place and you’re married, the odds of you staying married are close to zero. Divorces will now triple. Gays will never stay married. They just bought themselves the biggest bunch of unhappiness and legal bills that they could ever imagine.”

He added that the Supreme Court’s decision was also the “best thing that ever happened to the Republican Party” and “hands us the election” because candidates will not have to talk about marriage equality as much.

“Good luck and God bless, you’re all getting divorced, and it’s over, it’s not a campaign issue. I say it’s a good day for the Republican Party,” he concluded.

On his radio broadcast today, Bryan Fischer warned the Supreme Court justices who struck down state bans on gay marriage last week that they will one day answer to God for having misled millions of Americans into Hell.

"On Friday, the Supreme Court made it easier for people to go to Hell," he said. "They now have some accountability before God because they have made it easier for people to reject the truth of the Scripture about eternal salvation. This is a serious and a sobering thing and the majority on the Supreme Court is going to need to answer for this one day."

"The Supreme Court jeopardized the eternal souls of millions of Americans on Friday by justifying the sin of homosexuality," he continued. "It communicated, I believe, an exceedingly dangerous message on Friday that homosexual marriage and homosexuality are not perversions to be renounced but a constitutional right or constitutional rights that are to be celebrated and promoted. So the court has moved millions of impressionable Americans one giant step further away from repentance and eternal life."

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, who acknowledged on Friday that the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling is “the law of the land,” seems to be retooling his position, telling Iowa talk radio host Simon Conway later in the very same day that Congress could pass a “creative” law to “negate” the court’s decision.

When Conway asked Carson if he thought the decision was “a done deal,” Carson replied that it was not.

“I hope it will be revisited because the reason that we have separation of powers is to prevent runaway courts, runaway executive branch, runaway legislative branch,” he said. “The laws are made by the legislative branch. And, you know, you can make a law to negate virtually anything, you just have to be creative in the way that you do it. So no, I don’t think it’s over by any stretch of the imagination.”

Carson added that if he were to become president, he “would certainly get involved” in undoing the marriage decision because although he wants to “respect everybody and let everybody do what they want to do,” if “everybody gets the right to change things for their group” that will lead to “chaos.”

Carson also told Conway that the founding fathers certainly did not intend to have “people who are appointed and not elected making decisions about the lifestyle of the people.”

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is furious at the Supreme Court for its rulings last week rejecting a challenge to the Affordable Care Act and knocking down same-sex marriage bans around the nation. In an interview with Iowa conservative radio host Simon Conway on Friday, Jindal repeated his suggestion that “we just get rid of the Supreme Court,” adding that the “upcoming assault on religious liberty” that he has been warning about “is here.”

“So the Supreme Court’s basically saying words have no meaning, we don’t have to follow the Constitution,” he said. “Simon, I’m always looking for ways to save money. Why don’t we just get rid of the Supreme Court? Chief Roberts is maybe a great politician, but their job isn’t to be politicians, isn’t to be elected officials, their job is to read and apply the Constitution.”

“I’ve been very, very worried about the upcoming assault on religious liberty,” he added. “It is here. If the left, they condone discrimination against Christian florist, business owners and others that don’t want to participate in wedding ceremonies that violate their conscience or religious beliefs.

“If the left were really honest, Simon, they should just repeal the First Amendment to the Constitution. They don’t believe in it, they don’t believe in the freedom of religious liberty, they don’t believe in the Second Amendment, might as well get rid of that while they’re out of it, they might as well try to get rid of the 10th Amendment, they don’t believe in states’ rights.”

He added that the “White House made a mockery of itself” in its celebration of both rulings.

In wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on marriage equality, Republican leaders, led by GOP officials in Texas and North Carolina, have rallied behind the idea that public officials should be able to deny marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples if they say same-sex marriage conflicts with their religious beliefs.

Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration has said Louisiana court clerks and other state employees who don't want to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples because of religious objections won't have to do so.

Jindal's office has said the governor's religious freedom executive order as well as state and federal law will protect clerks and state employees who have moral objections to gay marriage and don't feel comfortable handing out licenses to same-sex couples.

"We believe the U.S. Constitution, Louisiana Constitution, Louisiana's Preservation of Religious Freedom Act, as well as our Executive Order prevents government from compelling individuals to violate sincerely held religious beliefs. We will continue to fight to protect religious liberty," said Mike Reed, spokesman for the governor's office.

The Louisiana governor, however, was singing a different tune back in 2009.

That year, a local justice of the peace “refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple” because he said he doesn’t “believe in mixing the races that way.” He went on to say that he denied the marriage license out of interest for the wellbeing of children, an argument similar to those marriage equality opponents make today.

Jindal said at the time that the justice of the peace violated the law and should lose his job:

The actions of a justice of the peace in Louisiana who refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple have prompted some top officials, including Gov. Bobby Jindal, to call for his dismissal.

Jindal said the state judiciary committee should review the incident in which Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace for Tangipahoa Parish's 8th Ward, refused to issue a marriage license to Beth Humphrey, 30, and her boyfriend, Terence McKay, 32, both of Hammond.

"This is a clear violation of constitutional rights and federal and state law. ... Disciplinary action should be taken immediately -- including the revoking of his license," the Republican governor said.

When the justice of the peace eventually resigned, Jindal said it was “long overdue.”

But now Jindal is trying to defend justices of the peace who are refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, citing the same arguments about personal beliefs and the welfare of children and describing himself as a “religious liberty” champion in doing so.

The Family Research Council’s Craig James said on the organization’s “Washington Watch” program on Friday that gay-rights opponents will face such challenges in the wake of the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling that they should take lessons on “how to handle adversity” from the survivors of the mass shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.

James was interviewing FRC President Tony Perkins, who warned that in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision, conservative Christians are “going to have to stand together because there are going to be some who are going to be casualties in this effort if we stand for biblical truth.”

Perhaps, responded James, these Christian casualties are “part of God’s plan.” Turning the fear rhetoric up a few more notches, James prophesied that “something is going to happen monumentally to someone that we didn’t think it would happen to, uh, Pastor Jack Graham or one of these big churches is going to get attacked, and it’s gonna put front and center stage the reality of this decision today. And maybe that’s what gets folks finally engaged.”

Iowa state Rep. Terry Baxter wrote in a Facebook post over the weekend that the Supreme Court “crucified both freedom of speech and the freedom of religion as guaranteed in our constitution” when it struck down state bans on same-sex marriage, claiming that preaching from the Bible “can now be prosecuted as legally incorrect.”

“Just as faithful Christians suffered in the coliseums of Rome for remaining true to the Bible and their religious conscience, so many Christians are about suffer in the legal coliseums of America,” he wrote. “Preaching the gospel just became a hate crime!” Except that it didn’t, and same-sex marriage has been legal in Iowa since 2009, and people like Baxter are freely able to denounce same-sex marriage without being thrown to the lions.

Welcome to the "United Corinth of America." Yesterday, for the first time our history, five unelected members of the Supreme Court officially placed our country in the final state of decline in our drift away from the God of Creation. (Please take time to read Romans 1:18-32. Pay special attention to verses 26-27.)

This debacle is about to give birth to the worse religious persecution in our 239 year history as a nation. Just as faithful Christians suffered in the coliseums of Rome for remaining true to the Bible and their religious conscience, so many Christians are about suffer in the legal coliseums of America.

Preaching the gospel just became a hate crime! Sins of sexual immorality are now constitutionally protected in the same category as age, race and gender. The problem is that God decides a persons [sic] age, race and gender, but human depravity dictates a persons [sic] morality.

Apart from a biblical definition of sin there can be no salvation. Why? Because Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Many forms of sexual sin are now constitutionally protected and will receive equal protection and promotion in our classrooms, curriculum, media, public sector and courts.

The definition of discrimination now includes preaching against sexual expressions. To preach the gospel and call for confession, repentance and conversion can now be prosecuted as a hate crime. Yet from my perspective, the greatest expression of love is to help a sinner turn from the error of their ways and find a new life in Christ.

The Supreme Court ruling yesterday crucified both freedom of speech and the freedom of religion as guaranteed in our constitution. For the past few decades the gospel has been viewed as politically incorrect, it can now be prosecuted as legally incorrect. As a Representative in the Iowa legislature, I have discovered that the sting of new legislation always shows up in the unintended consequences. The implications of this ruling are staggering.

In a moment of time, you have done more to energize our side than a string of political victories for us could ever have done.

You have so painted us into a corner and so overstepped the bounds of your office that you have singlehandedly strengthened our resolve to stand, even unifying groups and individuals that had not worked together before now.

For that, sir, I sincerely thank you.

I also want to thank you for confirming what we have been saying for many years now, namely, that gay activism is the principle threat to our freedoms of speech, religion, and conscience.

Brown says the marriage equality ruling has given justification to “a torrent of hatred” aimed at religious conservatives, and he cites a biblical injunction from Jesus to his followers to rejoice when they face persecution.

Thank you, Justice Kennedy, for bringing unprecedented religious persecution to the shores of our nation. Despite the darkness and pain ahead, this will only cause the Church to wake up and grow stronger.

It is worth noting that Brown made similar remarks about a wake-up call for the Church, as well as a “fresh call to revolution” among America’s pastors, two years ago after Supreme Court rulings that overturned key sections of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and opened the door for same-sex couples in California to get legally married. In that broadcast, Brown told Christians not to get upset about “gloating” from gay-rights activists, but to pity them because God will “have the last word.”

In the run-up to the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality, anti-LGBT activists bristled at comparisons to the Supreme Court’s 1967 ruling in Loving v. Virginia, insisting that bans on same-sex marriage shouldn’t be compared to anti-miscegenation laws since the latter didn’t have a religious basis.

Of course, while indeed the vast majority of Christians today oppose laws restricting interracial marriages, many Christians at the time used much the same arguments in defense of interracial bans as conservatives do to oppose same-sex marriage today (something one pro-equality pastor demonstrated creatively back in 2012). In fact, one-fifth of white evangelicals and Mississippi and Alabama Republicans still look down upon interracial marriages.

Nonetheless, Ted Cruz said today in an interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie that unlike same-sex marriage bans, “there is no religious backing” for interracial marriage bans, and therefore government officials should be allowed to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples if they say issuing such licenses would violate their religious beliefs. He also seemed to suggest that discrimination against interracial couples ended with the Civil War.

And in a 2013 speech for the Heritage Foundation’s “Jesse Helms Lecture Series,” Cruz said that “we need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate,” a reference to the notorious civil rights opponent who Tim Murphy notes “got his political start by bashing interracial marriage and accusing the spouse of a political opponent of dancing with a black man.”

On "WallBuilders Live" today, Arkansas pastor Tim Brooks spent most of the program saying that America today is just like Sodom and Gomorrah in which militant gays seek to force Christians to participate in their sin.

"Here is the only thing that will satisfy this agenda, and it's very clear: participation," Brooks declared. "We want you to come out of your house and participate with us ... Lot never tried to force his lifestyle on them, he never even brought that up. They are trying to force their lifestyle on him, come out and have sex with us, have to participate. They're going to force participation and that's what we're seeing around the country."

Brooks went on to cite a similar story from Judges 19 to warn that it becomes "unsafe when the homosexual agenda takes over a city."

For his part, David Barton warned that efforts to pass nondiscrimination ordinances that outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity are nothing more than attempts to legalize discrimination against Christians.

"Any time you talk about nondiscrimination," Barton said, "what you are saying is discriminating against people of faith ... Whether you have the Abortion Nondiscrimination Act, whether you have the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, whether you have a nondiscrimination ordinance, every one of those has turned out to be a major club by which you can beat back people of faith and their beliefs and their convictions. So whenever you hear nondiscrimination anything in the last 15 years, you can be assured that becomes a legal weapons by which to divorce you from your faith and make you bow down to what they want and their viewpoints."

Religious Right activists aren’tholdingback in their response to the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage, with more conservative pundits giving voice to their predictions that the U.S. will now face God’s wrath.

In response to the ruling, Mr. Obama called it an example of “justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.” That phrase turns logic and morality on its head as it relates to official government endorsement of sexual perversion. But I suspect it will eventually, perhaps very soon, be recognized in retrospect as an unwitting prophecy about God’s punishment on America for what she has just done.

I just received an email from my ex-‘gay’ friend Greg Quinlan informing me that today’s “gay marriage” ruling happens to fall on the anniversary of the fall of Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Judah in 586BC to Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzer: the ninth day of the fourth month of the Hebrew calendar.

I am convinced that this is the beginning of the end for America, and the vision or message will begin very shortly.

What is that vision?

I saw an economic crash much more serious than the stock market crash of 29. It will produce poverty and deep scarcity across our land, the likes of which has never been seen in our history.

Nothing grabs the attention of the distracted faster than the complete removal of all creature comforts and extravagant wealth.

Crops will fail, stores will close and commerce will come almost to a complete stop. It will not be pretty. Add to that, attacks from our enemies and natural disasters rising to meet the pride of the sinners’ right where it hurts the most.

Lee Duigon of the Chalcedon Foundation said the “antichrists” celebrating the court’s decision, which he said will destroy freedom, will go to Hell:

Yesterday was the most shameful day in U.S. history, and America will never live it down.

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Abortion did not require a radical makeover of our society, to be made to stick; but mock marriage will not endure unless its proponents can successfully criminalize Christianity, subvert and disable the church, and make mincemeat of our First Amendment.

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The nadir, of course, was their ordering all the monuments in Washington lit up with rainbow floodlights–the rainbow, remember, was originally a sign from God–to celebrate active defiance of the word of God. But these antichrists specialize in taking God’s name in vain.

Every one of those persons who celebrated has put his or her soul in danger of damnation. This is open rebellion against God; it will not stand, nor will it prosper.

In France, terrorists left a severed head at the site of an attack on a chemical plant. On Friday, the Supreme Court beheaded its own hostages – the Constitution and Judeo-Christian morality.

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The Court’s edict in Obergefell v. Hodges will be used to further the persecution of believers whose conscience will not allow them to go along with the travesty. The “gay marriage” drive has always been about punishing dissidents. That’s why Christian businesses are specifically targeted.

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But it’s not the culmination of the revolution. As Antonio Gramsci, the father of Cultural Marxism, wrote in his “Prison Notebooks,” the final stage is the abolition of the family and the church.

Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid believes that as a result of this ruling, which he likened to Pearl Harbor, America will no longer “be able to defend itself against its foreign adversaries and enemies.”

In fact, as the Scalia dissent notes, this decision will live in infamy. It is as if a Pearl Harbor-type attack has been achieved on America’s moral fabric and constitutional foundations.

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A country that descends to the bottom of the barrel morally and culturally will not be able to defend itself against its foreign adversaries and enemies. Indeed, we have the evidence all around us that, as the culture has degenerated, our ability to defend ourselves has simultaneously been weakened. The recent Pentagon gay pride event featured a male General introducing his husband, as a transgender Pentagon civilian employee looked on.

Mark Creech of the Christian Action League said that the court’s ruling will bring an end to opposite-sex marriage and America itself, adding that the decision represents “the same kind of tyranny fought against by the American Revolutionaries.”

It is not just religious people who believe in the traditional view of marriage who should be disquieted, but every American concerned about the advent of lawlessness in our culture. In essence, this decision greatly destroys trust in the Judiciary. Two Justices who have been outspoken public activists for gay marriage did not recuse themselves before the High Court. This not only places their participation in violation of the Rules of the Court, but also brings their partiality into question. When Supreme Court Justices essentially shut down the political process on a matter of such fundamental import, when they overrule the will of the people, when they ignore the proper court procedure and set themselves up as the final authority, what is that but the same kind of tyranny fought against by the American Revolutionaries?

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It is not likely fire and brimstone will fall on America immediately because of this decision, although God would certainly be justified in doing it. Nevertheless, this national sin is more apt to bring its own punishments overtime. Although many will think it hyperbolic to say, the state sanctioning of gay marriage will eventually destroy traditional marriage. Real marriage (natural) and anti-marriage (same-sex) cannot coexist any more than can matter and anti-matter. Children will suffer from marriage being redefined as a genderless institution that purposely renders either a mother or a father as obsolete to child rearing. Homosexuality will be taught in public sex-education curriculums as normal. It will further stress our Healthcare and Social Security systems by adding hundreds of thousands of new dependents. These issues, plus the constitutional crisis and threat to the democratic process this decision ushers in, may prove to be too much and result in a national collapse beneath the weight of our own sin.